Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

https://www.cwu.org/press_release/wikipedia-workers-to-seek-union-recognition/

by addshore • 28 days ago

118 261 28 days ago

https://utaw.tech/news/wikipedia-recognition

Animats• 28 days ago

The announcement says both

Wikipedia workers in Britain are setting a “global first” by becoming the first body of workers at the online encyclopaedia to seek union recognition.

and

Outside the United States, the United Kingdom is WMF’s largest employment location, and a substantial majority of its UK staff are union members.

Something is inconsistent here. Are they trying to unionize people who edit Wikipedia for free?

ymhr• 28 days ago

I think it’s the WMF employees who are unionising, as in salaried employees.

kennywinker5• 28 days ago

I read that as the majority of wikimedia employees in the uk have joined the union, but the union has yet to be recognized by the company with a collective agreement.

CaliforniaKarl• 28 days ago

There are other lines in the post that, to me, provide clarity.

First is this, the second paragraph:

British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) wrote a letter to management today (Wednesday 24thJune) requesting their right to be represented by the United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) section of the Communication Workers Union (CWU).

That makes it clear that this is regarding the "British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation". Yes, the headline does say "Wikipedia": I expect the CWU chose that because many more folks know what Wikipedia is, vs. the Wikimedia foundation.

Second is this:

Over 1000 Wikimedia volunteers and community members have also signed petitions in support of the workers, who have networked globally under the banner of Wiki Workers United (WWU).

I view terms like "[wikipedia] editors" as terms of art: "Editor" in the Wikipedia context maps to the more-generic "volunteer" in the broader context, which is why the post is referring here to "volunteers and community members".

So, I don't see any inconsistency in the article, but I see how the current post title can make it confusing.

In my opinion, I think it would be appropriate for you to email the HN folks, to ask the title be changed to something like "Wikimedia Foundation Workers to Seek Union Recognition".

isamuel• 28 days ago

You can be a member of a labor union without that union being recognized as your exclusive bargaining representative for a certain employer (or whatever unit).

jl6• 28 days ago

Have the WMF done something bad that needs counterbalancing or are they just forming a union out of some sort of principle?

fzeroracer• 28 days ago

They recently laid off an internal team that was popular among workers and also fired one of the oldest employees for dubious reasons. Notably all of the people laid off or fired were union advocates, so this can be seen as a supercharged reaction to an effort to union bust (whether it was or not, it was certainly perceived that way).

jordanb2• 28 days ago

The team was popular among contributors/editors. Their entire job was to handle the most upvited issues from the community and they were formed after the community felt like the management's priorities we not aligned with the community.

So like, the community was angry management was ignoring them. The response was to create a group to ensure some engineering time was put towards community priorities. Now that group has been fired.

anothermathbozo4• 28 days ago

unions are institutions for bargaining power, even under decent employers

gopher_space• 28 days ago

Yes but people generally don't bother with them under decent employers.

hungryhobbit• 28 days ago

Man, it's sad how far the wiki foundation has fallen.

For (literally) decades no one there would have even thought of forming a union! To get them to not only consider it, but actually go through the effort of actually doing it ... the foundation truly has shit the bed.

nickff3• 28 days ago

Wikipedia has a lot of money, along with a valuable dataset (for AI); it was only a matter of time until rent-seeker(s) would come along and try to get it. As we saw with OpenAI, it is difficult to keep a non-profit dedicated to its public benefit mission when it has something of tantalizing value.

kennywinker5• 28 days ago

it was only a matter of time until rent-seeker(s) would come along and try to get it.

So, the people who helped create the valuable dataset are “rent seekers” now? Must be using a different definition of rent seeking than any i’ve heard.

greyface-• 28 days ago

a valuable dataset

It's CC-BY-SA/GFDL, and the underlying copyright belongs to the editors that wrote it. There is no commercial value in reselling access, and WMF does not have the right to relicense it.

eru5• 28 days ago

The dataset is valuable in the same sense that water is valuable. It doesn't fetch a high price, because everyone can get it for free.

jordanb2• 28 days ago

It's bleak it seems like wikimedia is controlled by the same ghouls who are running Mozilla.

Why is it so hard to keep a public interest tech firm honest?

toomuchtodo3• 28 days ago

Power, status, and control attract the same personalities, regardless of entity type.

shye2• 28 days ago

Unionization shouldn't be seen as an emergency measure. Even if I would hypothetically accept union as a last resort, which I don't, safety nets should be built not only when you are speeding towards the ground, and often lack the resources, but much before that, when you are safe.

JumpCrisscross4• 28 days ago

safety nets should be built not only when you are speeding towards the ground, and often lack the resources, but much before that, when you are safe

Safety nets cost time and resources to build and come at the cost of agility. They shouldn’t be avoided at all costs. But a foundation in an industry where unions aren’t the norm taking that step can correctly be interpreted as a sign management fucked up. Given the foundation’s recent actions, that hypothesis is sustained here.

yesco• 28 days ago

My perspective until now was that the Wikimedia foundation was already supposed to be a union-like organization. Would it make sense for Linux maintainers to form a union within the Linux foundation? The vibes feel similar to me.

DrewADesign• 28 days ago

There are so many reasons being in a union is beneficial.

Developers should consider the likelihood of even modest efficiency gains from AI, along with a naturally cooling job market, cratering labor demand in software. Every shred of cushiness and every dollar above average in your paychecks is because you’re in a high-demand field, but it’s been that way so long that many developers have mistaken that for some sort of inherent specialness. Companies don’t pay people what they’re worth, they pay people what they’ll work for. If the demand for developer labor goes away, people that are as-or-more qualified than you will do your job for a lot less, and your employer will hire them and kick you to the curb. Being an ‘AI engineer’, unless you’ve got an advanced degree in ML or something, is no safety net. If you can make the transition from ‘developer’ to ‘fancy AI orchestrating developer’ in a few months, so can a lot of other people, and they’ll be looking for jobs.

The leverage might already be diminished enough to make unionization impossible in many places, but it’s certainly not going to get any easier. Consider it.

neilk• 28 days ago

For (literally) decades no one there would have even thought of forming a union!

Why do you feel so certain about that?

spoaceman77773• 28 days ago

Wow, they're on a roll over there. Just two days ago they permanently banned the cofounder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.

Per his tweet: "Well, that’s that—I’ve been blocked by Wikipedia “indefinitely” for unstated reasons, by the “consensus” of a mob. There was no due process, no prosecutor, no dispassionate judge, no jury, no interpretation of law. All my judges were self-selected and hated me."

Link to his June 22nd tweet on the matter: https://x.com/lsanger/status/2069061483422425287

_djo_2• 28 days ago

While the merits of Sanger's banning are worth debating, Sanger is dishonestly representing the process here. The reasons, rather than being 'unstated', were stated repeatedly and were not unreasonable. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

Telaneo2• 28 days ago

It was even directly linked to in the post on his talk page, that he took a screenshot of. Hardly unstated.

To be fair, there's a lot of text in that thread, but that is pretty unavoidable if the accusations have any sort of merit. He also actively participated in it, so he's probably actually read the majority of it.

wqaatwt• 27 days ago

Maybe the implication here is that supposedly the real reasons are personal/political and the stated ones are just the justification?

john_strinlai4• 28 days ago

for unstated reasons

the reasons were clearly stated, which he knows because he replied to them in the discussion.

whether you agree with the reasons is one thing, but this tweet is just a lie, and only serves to discredit him.

JumpCrisscross4• 28 days ago

the reasons were clearly stated

…what are they?

aircraft• 28 days ago

That seems completely irrelevant to the post. Plus, isn't that the guy who hasn't been involved in the project since 2002? If it's been 2 decades, maybe it's time to find something else

bwestergard• 28 days ago

This made my day. These workers will be better stewards of Wikipedia than management.

yogthos• 28 days ago

It took people in tech an inordinately long time to start finally realizing the value of collective bargaining.

declan_roberts3• 28 days ago

Between AI and H1b, it might be too late.

metaworkers11• 28 days ago

we should form a Union at Meta!

declan_roberts3• 28 days ago

I've been mostly resistant to unionization for my whole career, but I think now is the right time. Between AI and H1B, the pool of jobs available for engineers is getting smaller and smaller, especially at the low end.

When you destroy the entry level position, you also destroy the pipeline that creates senior engineers, a shortage of which is used as leverage to increase H1B in America.

kaikai• 28 days ago

Now may be the right time to HAVE a union, but the time to unionize was when engineers had more power. That same soft job market means we have much less leverage to unionize than we used to.

fluoridation• 28 days ago

When you destroy the entry level position, you also destroy the pipeline that creates senior engineers, a shortage of which is used as leverage to increase H1B in America.

It's okay, the same is happening across the board, everywhere. Companies are engineering their own labor shortage 10-20 years from now.

anothermathbozo4• 28 days ago

Can you say more about why you are resistant to unionization

declan_roberts3• 27 days ago

I was getting a fat raise every year. I didn't think I needed it from a first principle.

ggm• 28 days ago

Seems entirely reasonable and I would hope will be accepted as such by the management.

Frieren2• 28 days ago

There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.

sevenzero3• 28 days ago

I work in a 2 man company, for sure a Union will have many advantages for me x)

iso16314• 28 days ago

Aside from legal support, advice, and contributing to industry influence?

apelapan• 28 days ago

Are you just an employee or also an owner in that company? If you are an employee only, having a union to back you up could be extremely useful if things ever go bad.

Parae• 28 days ago

Yes, a union is a way to gather forces, not only in your company, but also in broader spaces. It's easier for a union (even of two) to ask to meet your local elected officials, to seek legal support, advices from other union.

irl_2• 28 days ago

I'm a director of my small company, and a member of UTAW. The union doesn't just help with employment disputes but also campaigns generally on improving working conditions for all, through things like health and safety and setting reasonable expectations for how work will be done.

6510• 28 days ago

If this was my blog I would have written something like the below which is entirely out of character not aimed at you and quite silly:

Republican jesus said: It would have been easier if the good Samaritan would have just taken the guys money without helping him.

I have this wild theory that civilization isn't actually about me. It means one can join a union without any direct personal benefits of any kind.

When for example my health insurance helps pay someone for their care I point first at them then at my chest and announce smugly, see? I paid for that!

No one thinks it's funny but that is not important, as long as I think it's funny it's a good joke.

The trial is over, it is now abundantly obvious that if everyone acts in their own self interest everything gets increasingly fucked up for everyone.

If you are hungry the free market gives you an advert for a sandwich you cant afford but would probably kill you slowly if you could.

Imagine retired people still being union members. Crazy right? They could have better spend their time looking at pictures of their children who never visit.

Ill let myself out

throe9338e8• 28 days ago

Do you think trolls should have a right to unionize? We are working really hard, but conditions are not best. For start we demand salary from local goverment (I am in EU)! Nobody should be forced to work for free!

IncreasePosts3• 28 days ago

It may or may not be in any individual's best interest.

For example, look at "bumping rights". If a company needs to eliminate a union position, and this is occupied by someone with say 20 years seniority, that person can "bump" some other union member out of their position who has a lower seniority. So, that person whose role was eliminated can push a person with only 5 years seniority out of their position. And then that person with 5 years seniority can bump a person with only one year seniority out of their position. And the person with 1 year seniority has no one newer than them so they get laid off.

Was it in the best interest of that newish employee to be part of a union? So they can act as a meat shield for someone much further in their career who would theoretically be much more employable in the general market?

krior• 28 days ago

The wikipedia atricle only cites american sources so that may be something unique to how US unions operate.

bArray3• 28 days ago

The only real reason for me in the UK to join a union would be for legal representation, otherwise I can represent my own interests.

At least here in the UK our unions are heavily involved in politics - which is a massive issue. Currently, the leadership of the unions and the people in them are literally opposite sides of the political spectrum.

irl_2• 28 days ago

At any moment some change outside my control could occur and my place in society would change. Right now I'm pretty self sufficient and don't really need the support of others in day to day life, but that can change, and there's nothing I can do about it. Seems like a good idea to use this opportunity to try and improve things for everyone, even if you don't care about others, just in case your place in society changes. (I actually think it's neat if we try to improve things for everyone for everyone's sake tbh but I get there are people that do not have such empathy)

DrBazza7• 28 days ago

The Labour party was founded by unions, so it's no surprise they're still completely beholden to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Labour_Party_(U...

siqncidif• 28 days ago

You didn't provide any argument, so you could have said the exact opposite and it would have been the same comment.

Here, I'll do it for you:

No, you are wrong it's the other way around

bko• 28 days ago

I don't believe a union would be to my best interest. Unions generally operate by encoding rules that purport to be fair and transparent. This includes things like determining how much someone gets paid based on things like tenure and education.

That sounds good in theory but as soon as you enter the workforce you'll realize that there is a huge range of capabilities thats difficult to capture but obvious to people in the weeds.

You'll also realize that strong workers want to work with other strong workers. Unions don't care where their unions fees come from so they protect all equally. This means they make it difficult to fire. Just look at police unions where they went to great lengths to "protect their own"

There are some benefits but I believe that accrue to the most mediocre or incompetent. Sure it sounds great that it's difficult to fire me and I know my salary for the next twenty years. But this is not what I'm trying to optimize for

lucumo3• 28 days ago

There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization.

That's a very theoretical view. (As most absolutes are.)

Unions and rules around unions can be very different depending on locality, industry and other specifics. The power and benefits a union gives a specific employee may not outweigh the cost they impose on that specific employee.

Furthermore, unions are organizations. They have their own internal power structures that can be corrupted by self-serving individuals or special interests. A blanket "union = good" view can make that invisible to you.

aaa_aaa2• 28 days ago

In one of my previous work, I was "forced" to enter a public union. They were simply leeches sucking government money (surprise, government was paying union premiums) through workers with almost no actual benefits. Whenever somebody glorifies Unions I just chukle.

one33seven• 28 days ago

So your point is, you have to look for a good union? Fully agreed!

changoplatanero• 28 days ago

What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were.

shit_game3• 28 days ago

The rising tide lifts all boats.

Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.

When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were

Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce. If people who are sympathetic to management and accept that they will be compensated greater by acting against the interests of the labor union, the union should block these promotions. If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.

dofm5• 28 days ago

You can fall ill or need working accommodations regardless of whether you are above or below average.

tovej6• 28 days ago

For me, the only one who has ever used the standard terms as a floor has been the employer. The union has always backed me up when I wanted higher pay.

I'll give an example. I've had managers switched on me, and they've then said my salary has to be reduced because it's higher than the median. The organisation I work for also has a salary policy where every level you advance, your "personal additional percentage" is cut. This eventually reduces everyone to the same, lower level. This is the employer, not the union.

The union, otoh, backed me up when I wanted to keep my existing extra percentage.

malfist2• 27 days ago

What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest.

The alternative isn't what is in your best interest, but what is in your boss's best interest

cdkmoose2• 27 days ago

Unions tend to use otherwise arbitrary criteria to determine a members value. Not all people with the same number of years of experience, the same job title or the same degree provide equal value to the company.

As a school board member, I had to deal with the situation of a nationally recognized(awarded) teacher who got paid the same as every other teacher with the same degree and years in district. When asked why we wouldn't pay him what he is worth, the answer was simple, your union won't let us. Not every job type/environment make sense to have a union.

kaonwarb• 28 days ago

Strong disagree that there is no other side of the question from the employee's perspective. Personally, I don't want to be collectively represented in my work by any group other than myself.

criddell• 27 days ago

What do you mean by that? A union represents you as a worker and not your work.

Baseball players, for example, are represented by the MLBPA. Collectively they get a say in things like setting the rules of the game and negotiating healthcare, but the union isn't taking credit when a player hits a home run.

DrBazza7• 28 days ago

In a jobs market place of wide choice, unionization is unnecessary. The tech job pool spans multiple industries, so if your employer is treating you poorly, leave.

In a jobs market where there are few employers, maybe unionize, because those employers are essentially a monopsony. Hence, in the UK, the NHS, teaching, and public transport, where the employer is the Government, they're heavily unionized.

eru5• 28 days ago

Until fairly recently, the general public used to be very suspicious of government employees unionising. Because it was unionising against them, the general public.

cellu• 27 days ago

British have no concept of unionisation and avoid conflict at all cost. Their employer tells them they must go back to five days to the office? They all obediently do it

dofm5• 27 days ago

Second part — avoiding conflict at all cost — mostly true.

First part - the British invented the modern labour union and there are still many, many examples of labour union negotiation every year that are highly visible to us.

nephihaha• 27 days ago

No idea where you get that from. Most of my childhood was dominated by strikes. We still have them.

WarmWash• 27 days ago

Ehhh, the darkside is that unions often levelize workers into bins to negotiate fair wages for that bin. This is good if you are a weak player and bad if you are a strong player, because it removes the incentive to work any harder than the weakest link - there is no reward for that. So if you know how the job works and are good at it, unions kinda kill the whole thing.

Pro unionists will tell you that you are a sucker for being a good worker anyway, there is no reward, but what else would they say? Look at all the people who have independently moved up in a company or hopped jobs for better pay? Probably not.

philipallstar3• 28 days ago

The workers are longtime contributors and organisers, and are deeply committed to the Wikimedia movement.

It always starts this way, and ends with over half the people not bothered but still under union protection, and cannot be removed.

jonkoops• 28 days ago

Ahhh the American mindset.

throwaway931352• 28 days ago

Imagine how high must those salaries be in union-prolific Euro nations, compared to the measly ones of those uncivilized Americans!

philipallstar3• 28 days ago

Your zero-content bias is on display, but I'm not in the least American. If I were American I probably wouldn't have seen so much union nonsense.

JdeBP• 28 days ago

This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861, and the same discussion points apply as there, including the fact that the press release is conflating 'Wikipedia Workers' and 'British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation'. The two are not the same.

This conflation appears to be the fault of the union. Certainly the people who write Wikipedia well know the difference between themselves and the Wikimedia Foundation staff.

throw939494447• 28 days ago

Seems like a loophole not to employ people. "Editor" sounds like a job title! There is code of conduct, all sort of paperwork, you have to deal with comitees, editorial process... There is non disclosure agreement, you are not allowed to discus internal stuff with people outside from company... wery far from "i seen something was wrong, so i just made quick edit"!

Smells like proper job to me!

We closed the same loophole with uber and doordash employees. Wikimedia should employ its editors!!!

weberer• 28 days ago

There is non disclosure agreement

No there is not. You don't have to sign anything to make edits to Wikipedia. On the other hand, these people are full employees with work contracts.

bawolff4• 27 days ago

Smells like proper job to me!

In proper jobs you get paid, and there is someone telling you what to do. Neither of those things apply to Wikipedia.

There is no NDA. The only exception is if you volunteer to join the group that deals with private data (this is not the same as being an Admin, its the step above. Its a very small group)

Comittees exist but are largely optional. If you want to change things at a meta level or do wide coordination, there is no getting around that. But such stuff is optional. You don't need to join any comittees if you just want to write articles.

Now, if you want to say its exploitative (editors put in the labour and get almost none of the created value), then fair point. I would say its no more or less exploitative than your average open source project.

chobeat5• 28 days ago

There's a union of wikipedia editors being formed and they are in alliance with the US and UK Wikimedia union. More public statements will follow in the next weeks about this.

nvr219• 28 days ago

Oh boy here we go

HugoTea• 28 days ago

Very exciting good luck to them all

bpt36• 28 days ago

What are the legal protections for collectively bargaining as non-employees with a corporation, if any?

It seems like there wouldn't be (and shouldn't be) any.

functionmouse• 28 days ago

I used to work at a call center for a large (fortune 500) company. But that company did not sign my paychecks. It was a shell company with a different name, so that the company could not be held accountable when someone inevitably jumped from the roof.

Since then accountability sinks have stood out to me. I'm going to side with the Union on this one. And plus, unions are good.

xhkkffbf4• 27 days ago

Good? They've been a mixed bag in my life. Unions are made up of people and they come with all of the good and bad of people. I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that. I suppose I can see some good, but for the most part the union ends up being another branch of management with a few slightly different powers.

Nifty3929• 27 days ago

Speaking of keeping separate things separate: remember that Unions (a business in it's own right) is different from the Union Workers that it represents.

some_random9• 28 days ago

I don't think it comes from the union, Wikimedia has always gone out of it's way to conflate the people who are creating, editing, and maintaining website Wikipedia and the leeches who captured that effort.

bawolff4• 27 days ago

British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation United doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

I suspect its just because naming things concisely is hard.

christkv5• 28 days ago

Unions at least in the European setting not really effective in protecting workers in the way people seem to imagine. The labor laws are somewhat but not really. It just increases the cost of getting rid of people and reduces mobility. So i don’t know what utopian view people have of unions but reality does not reflect that. It also leads to a salaried class of union representatives inside big companies that causes their own problems as they are the ones granting favors and benefits to their friends.

chobeat5• 28 days ago

Guess how those labor laws were achieved. Spoiler: unions. Same as weekends, 40-hour work week and so on. Strong unions win laws.

christkv5• 28 days ago

I don't dispute that unions were important and offer some sort of benefit. What I don't like is that most of the big unions in Europe receive a lot of governmental money and become lobbying groups for political parties. I would not consider them independent in any sense of the word.

pKropotkin• 28 days ago

Union of deletionists and corruptioneers?

henry2023• 28 days ago

You can go read Grokipedia instead.

logicchains2• 28 days ago

They should join forces with the Stack Overflow moderators for a true deletionists union.

bhartipoddar• 28 days ago

hope will accepted by the management

throw939494447• 28 days ago

In EU I would form union even at 3 person company. There are all sorts of tax benefits. Union fees are usually exempt from tax and social and health insurance. In my country we make dinner (yearly union meeting), produce meeting notes and get about 50 euro per employee. Union also organizes trips for families, tax free...

Worth asking AI about local lawx...

klez• 28 days ago

In EU

Where, exactly?

Union fees are usually exempt from tax

What do you mean? You pay taxes on other membership fees?

Martinussen3• 28 days ago

As in you can subtract it from your taxable income, I assume. I think it's fairly normal (in this part of the world*).

throw939494447• 27 days ago

In germany and poland.

Yes, you pay income taxes (and insurances) on all membership fees like gym (about 50%). If you put money into union, and union pays your gym fees, you save tons of money.

But there is tons of legal bs around unions. You need to structure it, like you are promoting socialism, and only reason to go into gym, is to smash capitalism!

hulahoof• 28 days ago

Whatever happened to the deepmind union effort ?

chobeat5• 28 days ago

they are still in talks for recognition

NooneAtAll3• 27 days ago

what does recognition even mean?

shouldn't main way of demanding recognition by a union just be a strike?

crunchiepooker• 28 days ago

Unions don’t protect workers, many studies show they only take dues and give them to communists. They have receipts.

chobeat5• 27 days ago

not sure if AI psychosis or a simple scab

Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

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